Category Archives: Cooking

When you are McDonalds you like this red box with a bouquet of really long chips [french fries]. Looks really good. So they insist that all their potatoes be Russet-Burbanks and they further insist that they have no blemishes at all. There is a very common defect of Russet-Burbank potatoes called net necrosis. You’ve seen them with those little brown lines or spots that come through them. Well, McDonalds won’t buy them if your potatoes have that. The only way to eliminate that is to eliminate an aphid and the only way to do that is with a pesticide called Monitor that is so toxic that the famers that grow these potatoes in Idaho won’t venture outside to their fields for 5 days after they spray. Then when they harvest these potatoes they have to put them in these atmospheric controlled sheds the size of a football stadium because they are not edible for 6 weeks. They have to off-gas all the chemicals in them. So you see, the desire for a certain kind of chip leads to a certain kind of agriculture.